By Jason Osiason

Sirat hit me like heatstroke. I went in expecting something meditative and instead got something closer to a trance. The movie starts quiet with a father and son driving through a desert looking for a missing daughter and before I knew it, it felt like the ground was slipping. What begins as a search turns into this slow unraveling of faith, memory, and control.

Luis, the father, carries that kind of exhaustion that lives in your bones. His son Ilyas is still figuring out who he is, torn between wanting to help and wanting to escape. And Leila, the daughter they’re chasing, becomes less a person than a haunting. The film moves like a fever dream. It’s raw, desperate, and hypnotic. Every cut feels like a breath you forgot to take. I didn’t even realize how tense I was until the final stretch, when the sound drops out and you’re left in silence that feels physical. It’s not about the plot anymore, it’s about the feeling of searching for someone who’s already gone, the guilt of realizing you might be chasing them for yourself.

I’ll be honest, it’s a lot. The film is exhausting. It’s heavy and sometimes pretentious, but that’s what I love about Sirat. Director Oliver Laxe doesn’t give you an easy out. He makes grief feel like weather, with its endless, shifting, suffocating. By the time it ended, I didn’t feel closure, I felt emptied out in the best way.

Sirat feels alive in a way few films do. It’s ugly, gorgeous, spiritual, and human all at once. [B+]